Thousands of anti communist diaspora rally on the anniversary of the capture of Ho Chi Minh City, prominently displaying the flag of the fallen CIA-backed anti-communist state south vietnam and the western imperialist state ‘australia’
by Eternal Weirdo Loser Friend
I’ve been thinking about what it’s like as diaspora to combat liberalism within our diasporic communities. The title is obviously a bit hyperbolic, but it’s rooted in the truth that we can’t simply take our own opinions of what’s happening in the motherland for granted as being true. I am diasporic myself – Indian, for my sins. In the imperial order, India is at least somewhat allied with the West, and over fifty percent of funding for the far-right RSS comes from the diaspora, who in general love Modi. Reading anti-caste scholars talk about brahmins and other oppressor caste people with maids, servants and drivers (including my family) who go to the west and remake themselves as “people of colour”, while still maintaining brahmin hegemony within the west and in the motherland1, has also been enlightening to say the least. Hopefully this article serves to strengthen the revolutionary tendency that is emerging, allows us to better identify and avoid endeavours that waste time and energy, and redirect energy towards those actions that may cause serious impact (both creatively and destructively)
There are many factors that create a systematic bias among ‘australian’ diaspora. For one, australian visa policy is designed by and for the ruling classes of australia. We all know about the white australia policy2. But it is also fascinating to note that just after the white australia policy ended, South-Vietnamese refugees to ‘australia’ were hand-picked3 by officials who travelled to refugee camps to select who would be given a visa – functionaries of the same government that had recently been prosecuting an anti-communist war4. This led a bolstering of thousands of anti-communists in the polity over the next few years. Today, the ‘character requirements’ for an ‘australian’ visa include whether ‘you are subject to an adverse security assessment by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’5, with support for an anti-colonial liberation movement resulting in immediate cancellation.6
australia’s physical isolation supports a particular class position among migrants. australia occupies a series of islands, and is quite far from most neighbouring landmasses. In comparison, the US shares a land border with Mexico, which enables many exploited class people to find ways to cross the border. This is next to impossible here – and creates at the first level a financial hurdle – biasing those among the global south who can afford plane tickets at imperialist exchange rates. Even for refugees who take the extremely dangerous voyage here by boat, these trips are extremely expensive, even when money is collected across multiple family members. Globally 67% of refugees are located across the border7. When we take into account visa policy, securing the kind of visa that might allow for permanent immigration to australia requires decent amounts of money and certain kinds of education or job prospects. Thus, regardless of what kind of labour roles a person might take up, on average, people who are able to make it out here are much more likely to come from well off, exploiting class family backgrounds in their countries of origins, and tend to have corresponding political biases and continued familial interests.
Also, just in general, things change. People get stuck and romanticize the ways things were in their home countries when they left, or when their parents left, in the case of second-generation diaspora. It’s important to be connected to changing reality on the ground. Like all other settlers on this land, diasporas here benefit from colonial and imperial wealth, and that creates an interest in perpetuating these systems (that we must fight), regardless of where we come from.
Liberalism is the dominant ideology in australia and that impacts which diasporic voices get promoted. People on the ABC and mainstream media can be straight up paid actors, useful idiots, or simply just ideologically aligned with these institutions – who trot out whoever support imperial interests. Currently in the case of Iran, that includes the “Australian Iranian Community Organisation”, who had previously called for the Australian government for the Iranian Embassy to be shut and the IRGC to be listed as a terror group – actions which have since been carried out8. Even in our social movements, ‘radical’ or otherwise, liberal voices are systematically uplifted. Think of the Palestine Action Group (PAG) in Sydney boosting the totally unfounded claims that Iran is behind supposed anti-semitic attacks in ‘australia’9, consistently working with police including calling the police on teenagers10, supporting and enforcing the censorship of people carrying flags in support of the armed resistance, actively discouraging mask wearing, and (most awfully) the constant funnelling of time and energy into symbolic weekly rallies that clearly are doing nothing in terms of stopping a genocide or abolishing the israeli state – rallies that even ASIO considers useful as a “pressure release” 11, moving action away from more effective methods. Just because individuals are from a particular diaspora, doesn’t mean that we should treat them as if they are the be all and end all of all political opinions with regards to those peoples.
It is our collective responsibility to work together to discern what the facts are on the ground, and what the appropriate courses of action are, sometimes even when there are no “appropriate” voices here to take leadership on that course. We can’t just move from like, “follow brown people” to “follow radical brown people” – this is just more targeted liberalism. We’re allowed to think critically and not just parrot the ‘right lines’.
We want to move from being a predominantly liberal diaspora to being diaspora who support revolution both here and elsewhere. That might look like anything from shifting our focus away from images of suffering towards educating ourselves on the different armed and unarmed resistance factions12, mobilising our own communities in support of global solidarity where possible, smuggling weaponry and cash to revolutionary movements, and destroying the empire from the inside, e.g. causing material damage to arms manufacturers. This will increasingly pit us against factions within our own diaspora, which is why we need to band together on a political basis across positionalities.
The task at hand is to strike out against empire at the intersection of where we are and where it is vulnerable, love and care for each other globally and in our communities, and continue to nurture/strengthen/develop those above and below ground ecosystems so that we are capable of fully tearing down the structures of empire, supporting First Nations people on this land to take their land back from the empire by force, and supporting a much more equitable global community of care and support, especially amid the oncoming storms.
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Huge thanks to Kawan for putting me up to writing this article and cohering all my points into something vaguely actually readable
1 Eg https://theimmigrationlab.org/blog/f/outcastes-how-caste-travels-across-borders also see several articles on RTI https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/
2 Supported by the colonial labour unions and the ALP, of course!
3 https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/first-arrival-vietnamese-refugees-boat
4https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/vietnamese-refugees-boat-arrival
5https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/help-support/meeting-our-requirements/character
6https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/government-investigates-palestinian-author-s-visa-after-post-celebrating-hamas-attack-emerges-20250808-p5mldv.html?
7 https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics
8https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-30/community-reaction-to-iran-diplomatic-ties/105713788
9https://www.facebook.com/syd.bmbc/posts/pfbid02oBnaDK5a9vdRwLNQowyF4cAqL781hRnsKQZ2ycAezMHLQc5ANqG8E9Aw544cmkPJl
10 https://www.sbs.com.au/news/podcast-episode/police-probe-into-pro-palestinian-opera-house-protest-sparks-new-wave-of-anger/romexkypj
11 https://www.freepalestinevic.org/media-watch/asio-director-to-labor-mp-pro-palestine-rallies-are-a-pressure-release-on-domestic-terrorism/
12 Yes Palestine, but also think the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Kashmir